Compress MP3 to 10MB
Compress a MP3 file to about 10MB. Lowers the bitrate to hit your target, dropping to mono and a narrower band only if the target needs it.
Up to 50 MB per file. Sign up free to compress files up to 100 MB.
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Checking files and selected compression settings.
This page stops at 50 MB and one file per run. Pro compresses files up to 1 GB and a full batch in one go, with a priority queue.
What reaching 10 MB costs an MP3
Set 10 MB as the target and the engine works down to it in steps, stopping at the first result that fits rather than padding the file back out.
Size is bitrate times duration, so the bitrate is worked out from your target and the length of the recording rather than searched for. Stereo is kept while the budget allows it; mono and a narrower band are used only once nothing else reaches the target.
Files are processed on our servers, not in your browser. The upload and the result are both permanently deleted within 1 hour, no backups and no copies kept.
No watermark, and no account needed to use it. 5 files a day at up to 50 MB each, sent singly or together; signing in is free and raises each file to 100 MB.
Fitting a long recording into 10 MB
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1
Go mono if it is one voice
For spoken material this is the single biggest saving available and it costs nothing audible. An hour of mono speech fits here with room left over; the same hour in stereo does not.
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2
Work out what the length leaves you
Ten megabytes is about eighty thousand kilobits. An hour has roughly 23 kbps to spend, half an hour has 47, ten minutes has 140. The first two are speech rates; the third is comfortable for music.
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3
Cut what is not the recording
Long files accumulate dead air at the start, false starts and pauses while equipment is adjusted. Removing those buys bitrate for the parts anyone will listen to.
The target built for length rather than quality
Ten megabytes is where the question changes. The earlier targets are about how good a short recording can sound; this one is about how much recording fits at all. Ten megabytes holds nearly eleven minutes at 128 kbps, or about three and a half hours of a single voice at 64 kbps mono. Almost everything that lands here is long: podcast episodes, lectures, interviews, rehearsal recordings.
What ten megabytes is usually for
Mail servers and messaging platforms commonly stop around here, and so do submission forms that expect a full recording rather than a sample. The material is long by definition, which means bitrate is being rationed across minutes rather than spent on seconds.
That makes the content type the deciding factor. Speech survives this rationing well. Music does not survive it past about ten minutes.
The point where even 10 MB is not enough
A three-hour recording has about 8 kbps at this cap, which no encoder makes pleasant. At that length the answer is to split the file into parts and compress each one, rather than to push a single file past what the format can carry.
Frequently asked questions
Can a full podcast episode fit in 10 MB?
Usually yes. A half-hour episode of speech has about 47 kbps to spend, and an hour has 23 kbps, both of which stay intelligible in mono. Episodes with music beds are tighter, because music needs more per second than talking does.
How long can music be at this target?
About ten or eleven minutes before quality starts to suffer, since that is where the bitrate falls under 128 kbps. Past that the file fits but the music audibly thins out.
Is it better to split a long recording or compress it harder?
Split it. Bitrate is spent per second, so halving the length doubles what every second gets. Two files at a listenable rate beat one file compressed past the point of being worth playing.